Coffee is the world’s most widely consumed beverage; it is relished by individuals from all races, backgrounds, and social classes. Over 1 billion individuals in the world drink over 2.25 billion cups of coffee every day. Finland is the world’s largest coffee consumer; 12kg of coffee is consumed by an average Finn yearly while Brazil produces and exports millions of tons of coffee annually making it the world’s largest producer by volume.
But what would happen if you could no longer afford a cup of Joe or if it was no longer available?
Coffee is, in many ways, a poster child of an industry facing a future crisis. Most coffee is grown from two different species — arabica and robusta — but there are 122 other wild species. Coffee’s already limited range of tropical growing region will likely dwindle, and 60% of wild coffee species face extinction. Millions of hectares of crops risk being lost in the space of a few decades and 25 million coffee growers risk losing their means of subsistence.
In many other types of crops, there are seed companies that drive breeding and care about conserving genetic diversity, but that doesn’t exist in the coffee industry. There is a disconnect between the numerous coffee roasters and the breeders who could turn crop diversity into new varieties able to, for example, withstand a drought or resist the latest pest outbreak.